Mid-December 2020 Book Club Selection- John C. Maxwell, THE LEADER’S GREATEST RETURN, Harper-Collins, 2020. Maxwell has written over hundred leadership books. Leaders believe in change not only in the organizations that they lead but also in themselves throughout their lives. This book addresses attracting potential leaders,, the leadership development process and empowering leaders.
December 2020 Book Club Selection-Joseph . Nye, Jr., PRESIDENTIAL LEADERSHIP AND THE CREATION OF THE AMERICAN ERA, Princeton University Press, 2013. Transformational Leadership and Transactional leadership are on two different continua. . Utilizing the work of eight presidents in the 20th century who impacted the development of the American Era. The author also demonstrates the difference between personal morals and public morals. This is a different sort of book for my leadership readers. although I believe there are useful lessons to be learned.
Mid-November 2020 Book Club Selection-Mark Hobnigsbaur, THE PANDEMIC CENTURY, Norton 2020. This excellent book will be of use to many health professionals and leaders affect by the coronavirus. The author reviews the pandemics of the last century and how they impacted the United States and other countries.
November 2020 Book Club Selection-John Eades, BUILDING THE BEST, McGraw Hill, 2020. This book presents an innovative approach to leadership development. Eades developed a new company called Learnloft to create new leaders utilizing 8 principles which elevate others to become successful.
Mid-October 2020 Book Club Selection- Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall, NINE LIES ABOUT WORK, Harvard Business Review Press, 2019. This is one of the first books to argue that the ways we have looked at leadership and other organizations in the past may have been based on false premises. This is a very important book for leaders to read.
October 2020 Book Club Selection-Ron Chernow, WASHINGTON; A LIFE, Penguin, 2010. This is an excellent book about our first President. It is not a fast read, but it is worth your time. Washington was a leader with many failings. It is interesting to see the real man and the man whose image has changed over time. I like to recommend biographies of people who demonstrate leadership in action.
Mid-September 2020 Book Club Selection- Ken Blanchard and Claire Diaz-Ortiz, ONE MINUTE MENTORING, Thorsens,2017. This is one of a series of monographs from the Blanchard group. The authors use a parable to show the importance of having a mentor. Using the word MENTOR, the authors present a useful model for understanding how mentoring works. The authors also discuss how to create a mentoring program in your organization. leaders will find this book worthwhile.
September 2020 Book Club Selection-Craig Fehrman, AUTHOR IN CHIEF, Avid Reader Press, 2020. This is an unusual book. it is both a leadership book and also an historical book. It discusses the writings of our presidents. The important lesson relates to books to help a candidate during the election process as well as legacy book or books after a leader leaves office. The book is fascinating and demonstrates the importance of writing to document leadership activities. I strongly recommend this book to all leaders who find the importance of communication during their leadership career.
Mid-August 2020 Book Club Selection-Jeffrey Pfeffer, DYING FOR A PAYCHECK, Harper Business, 2018. Our workplaces are often unhealthy places to spend our time. We often find we work in these places because we need the money. This book explores layoffs, lack of health insurance, long work hours lack of control and other work and family issues. I strongly recommend this book to my leadership readers.
August 2020 Book Club Selection-Alan Willett, LEAD WITH SPEED, Career Press,2020. This book addresses the concern of organizations in which project activities never seem to end on time and end with many defects which take additional time to address. Quality is often ignored. Willett builds his book on 21 laws for speed. Leaders need to strongly encourage speed to value. The author shows leaders how to change their work activities to create speed and increase quality.
July 2020 Book Club Selection-Tom Rath, LIFE’S GREAT QUESTION, Silicon Guild Books, 2020. Rath continues his work on the issue of Well-Being by examining the importance of the contributions that a leader makes. He examines the twelve major types of contributions. An instrument is presented which measures the contributions that an individual makes. leaders will learn the importance of contributions in their life work.
July 2020 Book Club Selection- Ken Blanchard, LEADING AT A HIGHER LEVEL(THIRD EDITION), Pearson Education, 2019, Over the last 40 years, Ken Blanchard and his consulting partners at THE KEN BLANCHARD COMPANIES have published many leadership and management books utilizing a story framework, This book puts together in one updated volume the leadership and management lessons learned from all these books. The book is excellent and I highly recommend it to my leadership readers.
Mid-June 2020 Book Club Selection-Patrick Lencioni, THE MOTIVE, Jossey-Bass, 2020. Through a fable, the author explores the motives that individuals have for becoming a leader. First, there are individuals who become leaders primarily for the rewards that come with the leadership position. Second, there are the people who become leaders to take up the responsibilities associated with the leadership role.
June 2020 Book Club Selection- Dan Heath, UPSTREAM, Avid Reader Press, 2020. When you are reacting to a problem, you are working downstream. When you are trying to prevent a problem or trying to develop an innovative set of strategies for the workplace, you are working at an upstream level. to work upstream, you have to deal with the barriers of problem blindness, lack of ownership, and tunneling. Heath then addresses seven areas of concern for upstream leaders.
Mid-May 2020 Book Club Selection-Frances Dunn Butterfoss, COALITIONS AND PARTNERSHIPS IN COMMUNITY HEALTH, Jossey-Bass 2007. This book is over 500 pages, It took me over two months to read. It is a comprehensive review of all the relevant literature in the field and deserves to be on all leadership bookshelves. The book discusses the importance of coalitions in today’s world. The book is based on the community coalition action theory model. The book is about building effective coalitions and partnerships. Leadership concerns are also discussed. The importance of solid team development is also discussed Planning, action frameworks, implementation, and evaluation models are also presented. Instruments of all kinds are also presented. This book is highly recommended.
May 2020 Book Club Selection-Miles Anthony Smith, WHY LEADERSHIP SUCKS-VOLUME 2, author published, 2016. Smith continues his discussion of servant leadership by discussing the pain, pitfalls, and challenges related to the fundamentals discussed in volume 1. He addresses the issues of whether the leader wants to be a servant leader or not, The struggle for the servant leader is whether his/her ego gets in the way of good leadership work. Communication and Competition issues are also discussed.
Mid-April 2020 Book Club Selection- Cameron Herold and Adrian Salamunovic, FREE PR, Lioncrest, 2019. All organizations must engage in public relations which can prove to be quite expensive. The authors make the argument that good public relations can be done by inside staff and can be free. Organizations can craft their strategy for free PR and can learn to master the interview process. The techniques presented are unique and can save the organization much money. This book is worthwhile and will be useful to the leader/manager.
April 2020 Book Club Selection-David M. Rubenstein, THE AMERICAN STORY, Simon and Schuster, 2019. This is a special book about leaders in the profession of history. The historians who have written a major book about an American leader. In turn, these historians have a discussion with the author about their personal reflections about the leader they have studied for their books. These conversations are excellent and give further reactions about their subjects and their leadership abilities.
Mid-March 2020 Book Club Selection-Miles Anthony Smith, WHY LEADERSHIP SUCKS-VOLUME 1, author published, 2018. The author believes strongly in servant leadership. Being a leader is not easy. Leadership is as much about management as good leadership. We learn leadership mostly on the job. Literature can give guidance, but literature must be action-based to have an impact. In this volume, Smith presents his working principles of the fundamentals of servant leadership. This will be a useful book for the new leader.
March 2020 Book Club Selection- Robert F. Mager and Peter Pipe, ANALYZING PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS, Third Edition, CEP Press, 1983. This book is a classic. It addressa the critical leadership issue of addressing performance in your organization. It uses a flowchart to address performance and how to evaluate it. The develpment of training programs is not always the right decision to make. I strongly recommend this book if leaders have not read and used it in their organization work.
Mid-February 2020 Book Club Selection-Cameron Herold, DOUBLE DOUBLE, Greenleaf Books, 2011. The book addresses the issue of doubling the size of your organization in three years. To plan for this, the author presents his technique with tools to make this happen. Some of these tools include vivid vision and reverse engineering, free public relations, and important leadership tools.
February 2020 Book Club Selection Mark Miller, WIN THE HEART, Berrett- Koehler, 2019. In the author’s eighth book, he addresses the important issue of the culture of work and why so many of our colleague are not happy. Utilizing a parable, the author explore the factors which affect engagement at work, He concludes that engagement impacts the organization in a very positive way. It taakes talent to do a job well, bit it is engagement that keeps an individual to be happy with the job.
Mid-January 2020 Book Club Selection- Ken Blanchard and Garry Ridge, HELPING PEOPLE WIN AT WORK, FT Press, 2009. This book presents a business philosophy developed WD-40. The business approach builds upon an approach called “Don’t mark my paper, help me get an A.” In other words, start with the outcome wanted and then work to attain the outcome. The authors build on the leadership concepts of situational leadership and servant leadership. If a leader practices this approach, he or she begins to lead at a higher level. This is the first book in a new Blanchard series.
January 2020 Book Club Selection- Cameron Herold, VIVID VISION ,Lioncrest, 2017. This book presents a revolutionary technique for creating a realistic vision for an organization. Vision statements need to be more than a one sentence vacation about your organization in the future. A vivid vision is one that imagines your organization three years from now in terms of what your organization will look like in that time . A vivid vision is a detailed document of about 3-4 pages. i think leaders will find this book important for the future of their organization.
Rowitz On Leadership 